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A fictional fictional character is a kind of metafiction. It is a character whose fictional existence is introduced within a larger work of fiction, such as the Itchy & Scratchy cartoon that exists only within the fictional world of The Simpsons. Metafiction is a kind of fiction which self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction. ...
Itchy and Scratchy The Itchy & Scratchy Show is a fictional television cartoon show within the television cartoon show The Simpsons (see show-within-a-show). ...
This article is about the television show. ...
Fictional fictional characters
When a fictional character's primary existence is in a media outlet that, itself, is fictional, that character is a fictional fictional character. This is usually, but not necessarily, done for comedic effect. For example, when John Ritter played the role of Garry Lejeune in the motion picture Noises Off, and Garry played the role of Roger Tramplemain in the stage production of Nothing On, Roger became a fictional fictional character, since Nothing On exists only within the realm of Noises Off. Comedy is the use of humor in the form of theater, where it simply referred to a play with a happy ending, in contrast to a tragedy. ...
John Ritter John Ritter in the opening credits of Threes Company. ...
Noises Off is a stage play by British author Michael Frayn which premièred at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, London, in 1982 (ISBN 1400031605); and a 1992 comedy film directed by Peter Bogdanovich based on Frayns play, with a screenplay by Marty Kaplan. ...
The extent to which this can be comically confusing is summed up in the following quote, taken from a behind-the-scenes sequence at the end of the Stargate SG-1 episode "Wormhole X-Treme!": "I'm Christian Bocher, portraying the character of Raymond Gunne, who portrays the character of Dr Levant, which is based on the character Daniel Jackson, portrayed by the actor Michael Shanks, originally portrayed by the actor James Spader in the feature film. Are you okay?" Stargate SG-1 (alternately spelled Stargåte, and popularly abbreviated as SG-1) is a television series based upon the 1994 science fiction film Stargate. ...
Wormhole X-Treme! is a campy, low-budget, farcical parody both of old science fiction series in the tradition of the original Star Trek series and of Stargate SG-1 itself. ...
There are virtually no examples of fictional fictional fictional characters, perhaps because most people simply can't comprehend that many "layers" of fiction.
Perhaps the most notorious fictional fictional character is Suicide Squid, whose eponymous comic book doesn't even exist in other media — it all started as an "in-joke" among the regular posters on a Usenet newsgroup. This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...
An in joke is a joke whose humour is clear only to those people who are in a group that has some prior knowledge (not known by the whole population) that makes the joke humorous. ...
Usenet is a distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP network of the same name. ...
Even when the character within the "story within a story" is based on a real person or a person from legend, the character takes on the sense of being a "fictional fictional character" by virtue of the setting, even though in fact the character remains a "real fictional character" or even a real person in truth.
"Frame" stories A related but separate phenomenon from the "story within a story" is the "frame story", where a supplemental story is used to help tell the main story. In the supplemental story, or "frame," one or more characters tell the main story to one or more other characters. A well-known example of this is The Princess Bride, both the book and the movie. In the movie, a grandfather is reading the story of "The Princess Bride" to his grandson. In the book, a more detailed frame story has a father editing a (nonexistent) much longer work for his son, creating his own "Good Parts Version" (as the book called it) by leaving out all the parts that would bore a young boy. Both the book and the movie assert that the central story is from a book called "The Princess Bride" by a nonexistent author named S. Morgenstern. The term framing device refers to the usage of a single action, scene, event, setting, or any element of significance at the beginning and end of a work. ...
The Princess Bride is a 1973 novel by William Goldman, combining elements of comedy, adventure, romance and fairy tale tropes. ...
Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is also a frame story. Both The Golden Ass by Apuleius and Metamorphoses by Ovid extend the depths of framing to several degrees. Chaucer: Illustration from Cassells History of England, circa 1902. ...
Canterbury Tales Woodcut 1484 The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century (two of them in prose, the rest in verse). ...
The Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius, referred to as The Golden Ass (Asinus aureus) by Augustine, is the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety. ...
Lucius Apuleius (c. ...
Cover of George Sandyss 1632 edition of The Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid is a poem in fifteen books that describes the creation and history of the world in terms of Greek and Roman mythology. ...
Engraved frontispiece of George Sandyss 1632 London edition of Publius Ovidius Naso (Sulmona, March 20, 43 BC – Tomis, now Constanta AD 17) Roman poet known to the English-speaking world as Ovid, wrote on topics of love, abandoned women, and mythological transformations. ...
Fictional artists Like S. Morgenstern, Peter Schikele's P.D.Q. Bach can be considered a "fictional artist", who supposedly created the works actually created by the artist's own creator. P.D.Q.'s life thus becomes something of a "frame story" (albeit indirectly) for such works as his opera The Abduction of Figaro. Peter Schickele – full name Johann Peter Schickele, but never used -- (b. ...
P.D.Q. Bach (1807-1742?) is the pseudonym under which Professor Peter Schickele has written a substantial body of satirical music, recorded on nearly twenty compact discs on the Vanguard and Telarc labels. ...
The Abduction of Figaro, described as A Simply Grand Opera by P. D. Q. Bach, is actually the work of composer Peter Schickele. ...
Mystery author Ellery Queen can also be considered a "fictional artist" of sorts, though the proverbial line between his "true-life" and "fictional" exploits are generally very blurred. Ellery Queen stamp issued by San Marino. ...
In this case the "frame story"—that is, the fictional creator's life—can be considered metafictional, since each story (or other work) supposedly created by that character adds a little to his or her own (fictional) story.
Deeply nested fiction In Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach, there is a narrative between Achilles and the Tortoise (characters borrowed from Lewis Carroll, who in turn borrowed them from Zeno), and within this fiction they find a book entitled "Provocative Adventures of Achilles and the Tortoise Taking Place in Sundry Spots of the Globe", which they begin to read, the Tortoise taking the part of the Tortoise, and Achilles taking the part of Achilles. Within this narrative, which itself is somewhat self-referential, the two characters find a book entitled "Provocative Adventures of Achilles and the Tortoise Taking Place in Sundry Spots of the Globe", which they begin to read, the Tortoise taking the part of Achilles, and Achilles taking the part of the Tortoise. Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945) is an American academic. ...
GEB cover Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (commonly GEB) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Douglas Hofstadter, published in 1979 by Basic Books. ...
Zenos paradoxes are a set of paradoxes conceived by Zeno of Elea to support Parmenidess doctrine that all evidence of the senses is misleading, and particularly that motion is nothing but an illusion. ...
Photograph of Lewis Carroll taken by himself, with assistance Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (January 27, 1832 – January 14, 1898), better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll, was a British author, mathematician, logician, Anglican clergyman and photographer. ...
Zeno may mean: a person Zeno (emperor) (c. ...
In The Sandman by Neil Gaiman, there is a story within a story within a story, as the necropolis apprentice Pentrefax tells a story that includes a storytelling session. Neil Gaiman (November 2004) Neil Richard Gaiman () (November 10, 1960, Portchester, Hampshire) is an English Jewish author of numerous science fiction and fantasy works, including many comic books. ...
Sue Townsend's character Adrian Mole once claimed to have written a book X about a character who wrote a book Y about another character. However, since none of the contents of book Y were included or described in Sue Townsend's book, it is not clear whether this is a fictional fictional fictional character. Sue Townsend (born April 2, 1946) is the author of the Adrian Mole series of books. ...
Adrian Albert Mole (born April 2, 1967) is the fictional protagonist in a series of books by Sue Townsend. ...
From fiction to reality Occasionally a character's metafictional setting becomes such a popular element of the primary fiction that the producer(s) of the primary fiction decide to produce the secondary fiction in earnest. A prime example of this is Buzz Lightyear from the Toy Story movies; the character in the movies was an action figure based on a fictional Buzz Lightyear cartoon series, which was later actually produced. Spoiler warning: Buzz Lightyear is a fictional character appearing in several CGI films and cartoons by Disney and Pixar. ...
Toy Story is a computer-generated imagery (CGI) animation film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution in the United States on November 21, 1995, and the United Kingdom on 22 March 1996. ...
Recursion Occasionally, though primarily on television, the characters in a story become the subjects of dramatizations based on their own lives or events that they have experienced. The most notorious case of this took place on the Seinfeld television series; it has also happened on other shows including The X-Files and the short-lived Ellery Queen series. Seinfeld was a television sitcom which ran from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998. ...
The X-Files is a popular American television series created by Chris Carter. ...
Ellery Queen stamp issued by San Marino. ...
There is also the "recursive story", for example:
- "'Twas a dark and stormy night, and the captain said to his crew, "Gather round, and I'll tell ye a tale."
- So the crew gathered round, and the captain said:
- "'Twas a dark and stormy night, and the captain said to his crew, "Gather round, and I'll tell ye a tale."
- So the crew gathered round, and the captain said:
- "'Twas a dark and stormy night, and the captain said to his crew, "Gather round, and I'll tell ye a tale."
- So the crew gathered round, and the captain said:
- "'Twas a dark and stormy night, and the captain said to his crew..." etc,
and sometimes listeners who are unaware of the trick will listen through several recursions before realizing that the substance of the story is never going to start. A Sierpinski triangle —a confined recursion of triangles to form a geometric lattice. ...
Examples
Individual characters Itchy and Scratchy The Itchy & Scratchy Show is a fictional television cartoon show within the television cartoon show The Simpsons (see show-within-a-show). ...
This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...
Caption Proton is the lead character in the fictional Holodeck program The Adventures of Captain Proton, played aboard the USS Voyager by Tom Paris, Harry Kim and various other crew members. ...
Dixon Hill is fictional detective in the Star Trek universe, a homage to Sam Spade set in 1940s San Francisco. ...
Atreyu is a fictional character in Michael Endes novel, The Neverending Story and the movie of the same name directed by Wolfgang Peterson. ...
Wart as he appeared in a strategy guide in the premiere issue of Nintendo Power. ...
This article is about the North American version of Super Mario Bros. ...
Shakespeare A Midsummer Nights Dream is a romantic comedy by William Shakespeare written sometime in the mid-1590s. ...
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is a tragedy by William Shakespeare and one of his best-known and most oft-quoted plays. ...
Loves Labours Lost is one of William Shakespeares early comedies; it is believed to have been written around 1595-1596 and is probably contemporaneous with Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Nights Dream. ...
Other examples Noises Off is a stage play by British author Michael Frayn which premièred at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, London, in 1982 (ISBN 1400031605); and a 1992 comedy film directed by Peter Bogdanovich based on Frayns play, with a screenplay by Marty Kaplan. ...
Wormhole X-Treme! is a campy, low-budget, farcical parody both of old science fiction series in the tradition of the original Star Trek series and of Stargate SG-1 itself. ...
This article is about the North American version of Super Mario Bros. ...
Bewitched is a 2005 film produced by Columbia Pictures and inspired by the classic television series of the same name. ...
The promotional poster for Lingerie Fighter Papillon Rose Lingerie Fighter Papillon Rose is an H anime which parodies the magical girl genre, particularly Sailor Moon and Revolutionary Girl Utena. ...
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